'Htatitllllliiuii;, 


HUBBARD 


ETHEL 


^Illlllllllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllltllllllllllllltlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllj^ 


1  / 

TT HIS  leaflet  | 

1  is  one  of  a 

series  of  popular 

1 

sketches  of  mis¬ 

I 

sionary  heroines 

§ 

published  in  con¬ 

j 

nection  with  the 

1 

I  Fiftieth  Anni¬ 

1 

versary  of  our 

|  . 

Woman’s  Board 

i 

of  Missions, 
November,  1917. 

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THE  MOTHER 

OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


HE  title  reads  like  a  conundrum; 
“the  mother  of  a  thousand 
daughters,”  who  is  she?  Who 
could  she  be  save  some  big- 
hearted,  faithful  teacher  in 
a  girls’  school  —  in  this  instance  the  prin¬ 
cipal  of  the  first  school  for  girls  in  the 
whole  continent  of  Asia.  Her  name  is 
Eliza  Agnew  and  for  forty  years  she 
was  at  the  head  of  the  Uduvil  Girls’ 
School  in  the  province  of  Jaffna  on 
the  island  of  Ceylon. 

In  all  those  forty  years  she  never  came 
to  the  United  States  and  never  left 
Jaffna  but  once,  when  she  went  to  the 
Pulney  Hills  for  a  few  weeks’  vacation. 
“I  gave  it  all  up  when  I  left  America,”  she 
said,  having  resolved  from  the  first  never 
to  return  home.  She  was  able  to  carry 
out  this  resolve  because  she  had  such 
phenomenal  health  of  body  and  mind. 

The  Uduvil  Girls’  School  came  into  being 
in  the  year  1814,  ten  years  after  the  first 
missionaries  from  America  landed  in  Asia, 
and  sixteen  years  before  Eliza  Agnew  began 
her  record  term  of  service.  Samuel  Newell, 
one  of  that  group  of  pioneer  missionaries, 
took  refuge  in  Jaffna  after  his  desolate 
voyage  from  the  Isle  of  France,  where 
Harriet,  his  young  wife,  had  died  and  was 
buried.  Jaffna  had  once  been  the  scene 
of  Roman  Catholic  and  Dutch  missionary 
work  and  was  at  that  time  occupied  by  a 
small  English  mission.  The  region  seemed 
to  Samuel  Newell  a  favorable  site  for  the 
mission  he  had  failed  to  locate  in  India  or 
upon  the  Isle  of  France.  Acting  upon  his 


THE  MOTHER  OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


suggestion,  the  American  Board  sent  several 
missionaries  to  Ceylon,  four  of  whom 
settled  in  Uduvil,  a  little  village  in  the 
center  of  one  of  the  larger  islands  of  the 
Jaffna  group.  Mrs.  Winslow,  one  of  these 
early  missionaries,  was  the  founder  of  the 
Uduvil  Girls’  School,  the  first  school  for 
girls  in  Asia. 

Soon  after  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Winslow  had 
made  a  home  for  themselves  out  of  the 
tumble-down  house  once  owned  by  a 
Franciscan  friar,  two  little  Tamil  girls 
crept  stealthily  to  the  house  and  peeped 
in  at  door  and  windows.  When  Mrs. 
Winslow  tried  to  speak  to  them,  they  ran 
away  in  terror,  but  only  to  return  again 
and  again  until  at  last  they  sat  upon  the 
steps  and  allowed  her  to  teach  them  to  sew, 
beguiled  by  the  promise  of  a  jacket  as  soon 
as  they  could  learn  to  make  it.  Six  months 
later  one  of  these  little  girls  was  caught  in 
a  sudden  storm  and  invited  inside  the 
missionaries’  house  to  eat  supper  and  spend 
the  night.  When  she  went  home  the  next 
morning  her  father  said,  “You  need  not 
come  here.  You  have  eaten  the  mission¬ 
aries’  rice.  Go  back  to  them;  be  their  child 
hereafter.”  She  went  back  to  become 
Betsy  Pomeroy,  the  first  pupil  in  the  girls’ 
boarding  school,  the  first  to  acknowledge 
herself  a  Christian,  and  one  of  the  first 
graduates  to  become  a  Christian  wife  and 
mother. 

In  the  other  mission  stations  of  Jaffna 
the  missionaries  had  coaxed  a  few  girls  to 
come  to  them  for  lessons,  and  in  1824  all 
these  girls  were  gathered  into  a  central 
boarding  school  in  Uduvil,  numbering 
twenty-nine  pupils  at  the  start.  A  rude 
bungalow  answered  for  schoolhouse,  con¬ 
sisting  merely  of  a  thatched  roof  supported 


THE  MOTHER  OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


by  six  or  eight  posts.  The  sand  floor 
served  for  blackboard,  palm  leaves  for 
slates  and  styles  for  pencils.  Steadily  the 
school  grew  in  numbers  until  in  1838  there 
were  one  hundred  pupils  and  a  brick  school¬ 
room  and  a  dormitory  were  built  for  their 
accommodation.  In  the  dormitory  were 
set  apart  little  rooms  known  as  “prayer 
rooms,”  and  these  little  rooms  contributed 
directly  to  the  marked  spiritual  quality 
of  the  school. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  the  missionaries 
in  Uduvil  sent  to  the  American  Board  a 
request  for  “unmarried  females”  to  assist 
in  the  work  of  the  mission,  particularly  in 
the  girls’  school.  Some  years  before,  a 
little  Scotch  girl  at  the  age  of  ten,  had  heard 
Dr.  Scudder  speak  in  a  New  York  church 
and  had  been  stirred  with  the  desire  to 
become  a  missionary.  Twenty  years  later 
the  desire  was  answered  and  in  1839  Eliza 
Agnew  sailed  from  Boston  on  the  “Black 
Warrior,”  a  missionary  under  appointment 
for  Uduvil,  Ceylon. 

The  record  of  this  missionary’s  life  has 
no  dramatic  elements  of  human  contacts, 
no  stirring  incidents  of  dilemma  and  escape, 
but  it  is,  nevertheless,  a  life  story  of  strange 
potency.  Her  character  was  cast  away 
back  in  the  hills  of  Scotland  where  the 
Agnew  family  was  a  dominating  force  in  the 
neighborhood  life.  In  this  daughter,  born 
and  bred  in  New  York,  was  developed  the 
tenacity  of  purpose  and  the  tremendous 
loyalty  which  belonged  to  her  inheritance. 
In  the  heathen  surroundings  of  Ceylon, 
this  Scotch  Christian  lived  out  her  family 
traditions  and  her  personal  convictions 
far  more  completely  than  she  could  have 
had  opportunity  to  do  in  Scotland  or 
America. 


THE  MOTHER  OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


When  Eliza  Agnew  took  up  her  work  in 
in  XJduvil  in  1840,  there  were  about  a 
hundred  girls  from  the  high-caste  families 
of  Jaffna  under  her  care.  These  Tamil 
girls  carried  themselves  with  an  inborn 
dignity  which  came  from  the  superior 
position  accorded  them  in  Jaffna,  because 
there  girls  and  women  are  the  property- 
owners.  In  northern  Ceylon  land  is  owned 
by  the  women,  the  property  passing  from 
mother  to  daughter  rather  than  from  father 
to  son.  By  this  custom  a  son  can  be  dis¬ 
inherited,  but  a  daughter  never.  Not¬ 
withstanding  their  high  caste  and  native 
independence,  the  XJduvil  girls  were  notably 
responsive  to  the  spiritual  appeal  of  the 
school,  and  readily  yielded  to  the  earnest¬ 
ness  of  Miss  Agnew’s  character  and  teach¬ 
ing.  She  exerted  upon  her  pupils  a  pe¬ 
culiarly  solid  influence  which  stood  the 
test  of  time  and  separation.  There  was 
no  mistaking  the  set  of  her  life,  and  no 
doubt  of  the  loyalty  of  her  heart  to  her 
hundreds  of  pupils.  Very  naturally  she 
was  called  by  the  people  of  Jaffna,  “the 
mother  of  a  thousand  daughters,”  because 
approximately  a  thousand  girls  passed 
under  her  influence  and  found  in  her  the 
heart  of  a  mother  who  lavishes  her  all  upon 
children  not  her  own.  She  came  close  to 
her  pupils  in  their  most  vital  experiences, 
both  during  their  school  days  and  after 
graduation.  Once  she  said  of  herself  that 
probably  she  had  led  more  brides  to  the 
altar  than  any  other  person  living. 

In  1844,  when  the  school  jubilee  was  held, 
Miss  Agnew  welcomed  hundreds  of  “old 
girls”  to  XJduvil,  and  it  was  then  discovered 
that  practically  every  girl  who  had  gone 
through  the  whole  course  had  become  a 
Christian.  Three  hundred  and  sixty-five 


THE  MOTHER  OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


had  married  and  established  Christian 
homes  such  as  has  made  the  word  “home” 
spell  a  new  meaning  in  the  community. 
Many  were  the  wives  of  pastors,  catechists, 
teachers,  doctors,  lawyers,  government  offi¬ 
cials,  all  occupying  positions  of  honor  and 
usefulness  for  which  they  had  been  fitted 
by  the  life  lessons  they  had  learned  from 
their  teacher,  Miss  Agnew. 

Not  only  during  the  school  year  did  this 
indefatigable  teacher  link  her  life  with  her 
pupils,  but  all  her  vacations,  save  one, 
were  given  to  her  girls  of  former  years. 
She  would  go  from  one  mission  station  to 
another,  always  on  the  same  quest,  to 
discover  and  help  her  girls.  Her  eye  was 
quick  to  discern  evidences  of  thrift  and 
efficiency,  as  well  as  carelessness  in  house¬ 
hold  affairs.  If  a  child’s  garment  had  an 
unseemly  rent,  she  would  say: 

“Oh  my  Anarche,  is  this  the  way  you 
learned  to  take  care  of  your  clothes !  You 
have  not  lost  your  needles  and  thread  down 
the  well,  have  you?  Now  the  next  time 
I  come  you  must  have  the  clothes  all  as 
nice  and  neat  as  are  the  pretty  little  ones 
that  wear  them.” 

Even  when  her  girls  grew  to  be  middle- 
aged  women  and  their  children’s  children 
claimed  her  interest,  she  would  still  show 
as  much  concern  for  these  older  graduates 
as  for  the  last  year’s  senior  class.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  a  heart  of  such  motherly 
capacity  should  call  forth  the  responsive 
affection  of  a  thousand  daughters? 

It  is  an  enviable  record,  that  of  the 
modest  but  indomitable  Scotch  woman  in  the 
Uduvil  School.  From  the  inspiration  of 
her  leadership,  more  than  six  hundred  girls 
professed  allegiance  to  Christ.  Equipped 
by  her  splendid  Bible  teaching,  forty  or 


THE  MOTHER  OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


more  Bible  women  went  out  into  the 
villages  of  Ceylon,  to  try  to  make  Jesus 
Christ  more  real  and  compelling  than  Siva, 
whom  the  Ceylonese  worshipped.  Because 
this  one  life  was  lived  loyally  and  trium¬ 
phantly,  hundreds  of  homes  and  scores  of 
villages  received  a  lasting  blessing.  It 
was  living  worthy  the  name  to  have  laid 
the  impress  of  one’s  character  upon  so  many 
and  with  such  depth  and  permanence. 

The  source  of  Eliza  Angew’s  influence 
lay  not  in  any  genius  of  brain  or  personality, 
but  in  simple  fidelity.  Herein  lies  the 
great  lesson  of  her  life.  She  was  a  simple, 
straightforward  woman,  with  natural  execu¬ 
tive  ability  and  a  large  fund  of  information 
but  with  more  than  natural  adherence  to 
duty  and  vision  of  the  scope  of  that  duty. 
The  genius  of  her  life  was  her  tremendous 
realization  of  the  potency  of  prayer.  Her 
pupils  used  to  say  that  no  rising  bell  was 
needed  to  waken  them  for  at  the  same  hour, 
before  daylight  each  morning,  they  heard 
her  rise  in  an  adjoining  room  and  pray  for 
the  school  and  the  individual  girls.  If  things 
went  wrong,  she  might  have  been  heard  to 
give  a  little  sigh  and  say,  “I’ll  tell  the 
Master.”  Morning,  noon  and  night  and 
often  in  the  night,  she  spoke  to  Him  with 
the  utmost  spontaneity  and  confidence. 
Her  prayer  life  was  so  real  and  convincing 
that  it  had  incalculable  effect  upon  her 
associates. 

At  one  time  a  baby  of  four  months  was 
seriously  sick  in  the  home  of  some  young 
missionaries  in  Uduvil.  The  parents  of 
the  child  had  been  obliged  to  occupy  a 
dilapidated  house  and  one  night,  after  the 
mother  had  fallen  asleep  from  the  exhaus¬ 
tion  of  long  watching,  a  cold  stream  of  rain 
water  came  through  the  leaky  roof  and 


THE  MOTHER  OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


fell  upon  the  chest  of  the  sick  baby.  Natu¬ 
rally,  the  symptons  became  alarming  and 
recovery  seemed  hopeless.  Into  this  anxious 
home  Miss  Agnew  came  each  day  at  eleven 
o’clock,  went  into  the  room  where  the  child 
lay,  closed  the  door  and  knelt  by  the  bed¬ 
side  to  pray  for  the  little  girl’s  life.  When 
that  mother  looked,  in  after  years,  upon 
her  sturdy  young  daughter  and  recalled 
the  baby  whose  eyes  were  even  set  in 
death,  it  was  easy  to  share  Miss  Agnew’s 
belief  in  the  potency  of  prayer. 

In  1879,  Eliza  Agnew  resigned  her  posi¬ 
tion  as  principal  of  the  Uduvil  Girls’ 
School,  after  forty  years  of  uninterrupted 
service.  Relatives  in  the  United  States 
urged  her  to  make  her  home  with  them  in 
her  old  age,  but  she  replied:  “I  do  not  know 
what  others  may  think,  but,  as  for  me,  I 
have  a  strong  feeling  that  my  work  in 
Jaffna  is  not  yet  done.  ‘Guide  me  O  Thou 
great  Jehovah’  is  my  daily  prayer.”  In 
order  to  spend  her  remaining  days  among 
the  native  Christians  she  moved  to  Mane- 
pay  and  gave  much  of  her  time  to  her 
‘‘old  girls.”  Especially  did  she  keep  a 
quiet  watch  over  those  of  her  flock  who 
had  slipped  out  of  the  fold  and  needed  her 
love  and  prayers  to  draw  them  back  into 
its  safe  shelter. 

In  the  summer  of  1883,  at  the  age  of 
seventy-six,  Miss  Agnew  had  a  stroke  of 
paralysis  and  in  a  few  days  died  the  peaceful 
death  for  which  her  old  pupils  had  prayed, 
knowing  that  she  could  not  recover.  The 
funeral  service  in  the  Uduvil  church  was  a 
further  demonstration  of  the  power  of  her 
life.  Missionaries,  English  government  offi¬ 
cials  and  a  throng  of  native  Christians 
represented  the  extent  and  genuineness 
of  her  influence.  The  real  measure  of  her 


THE  MOTHER  OF  A  THOUSAND  DAUGHTERS 


life’s  value  was  expressed  in  the  faces  and 
bearing  of  those  Christian  women,  her 
pupils,  who  stood  for  the  thousand  daugh¬ 
ters  she  had  mothered. 

In  the  little  cemetery  at  Uduvil  where 
Eliza  Agnew  and  several  other  missionaries 
are  buried,  the  four  hundred  girls  of  the 
Uduvil  school  gather  each  year  at  the 
anniversary  of  her  death  and  hold  a  service 
of  prayer  at  her  grave.  Thus  the  school 
of  the  present  is  linked  with  the  school  of  the 
past,  and  the  splendid  traditions  of  the 
old  days  are  made  the  ideals  of  the  new. 


WOMAN’S  BOARD  OF  MISSIONS 
704  Congregational  House 
Boston,  Mass. 


VERMONT  PRINTING  COMPANY,  URATTLEBORG 


